As I shared with you in January, the Nathan Cummings Foundation board decided to focus the totality of the foundation’s assets on advancing racial, economic, and environmental justice (REEJ). Today, I am excited to share our definitions of these broad terms and explain how we will direct resources to support REEJ solutions.

Racial justice is the removal of structural barriers and hierarchies based on race. It seeks to reimagine political, economic, and social systems in ways that allow all people to thrive, regardless of their racial identity. To advance racial justice, we will support organizations that address the following focus areas:

• Civic Engagement: We support efforts to ensure that BIPOC and other marginalized communities have the access and capacity to participate freely in shaping the policies, practices, and institutions that impact their everyday lives. 
• Racial Wealth Gap: We support efforts that seek to repair historical harm, build wealth, and address the root causes of the racial wealth gap. 
• Racism + Oppression: We support efforts to build the infrastructure and capacity necessary to create systems that are free from oppression and allow us all to thrive.  

Economic justice means that everyone has opportunities to participate and thrive in the economy, including those who are marginalized by our current economic systems. Economic justice creates a stronger economy, because prosperity and equity go hand in hand. To advance economic justice, we will support organizations that address the following focus areas:

• Economic Security: We focus on systemic efforts to mitigate economic precarity and secure a path to a more stable future for poor and low-income people.
• Access to Capital:We support efforts to provide more access to capital for historically excluded entrepreneurs and to cultivate an ecosystem in which they can prosper.
• Monopoly Power: We focus on efforts to decrease corporate power and create a level playing field for workers, marginalized communities, and small businesses.

Environmental justice is the right of all people and communities to a clean, healthy, and safe environment. It promotes equal environmental protection under the law and in fact. It empowers all communities to make informed decisions and fully participate civically and economically in the creation of environmental solutions. To advance environmental justice, we will support organizations that address the following focus areas:

• Environmental Harms: We focus on systemic efforts to prevent and repair environmental disparities and to ensure affected communities can meaningfully engage in solutions that protect both public health and ecosystems. 
• Inclusive Participation in the Green Economy: We focus on efforts to ensure BIPOC-led environmental organizations and diverse companies have access to and can take full advantage of Green Economy opportunities. 
• Regenerative Economic Models: We focus on social entrepreneurs and innovators who build regenerative projects and models based on sustainability, ecological restoration, resilience, and community wealth-building.

Now that we have clarity on definitions and focus areas, we are ready to seek partners who will lead the way in driving meaningful outcomes and impact. To support that search, we will be opening our website for letters of inquiry (LOI) for grants and program-related investments (PRIs), starting in January 2024. We will share more details on the LOI process soon. If you have any questions or comments in the meantime, please reach out to communications@nathancummings.org. I welcome your feedback!

In pursuit of solutions,

Rey Ramsey

President and CEO

As a foundation rooted in the Jewish principle of Tikkun Olam, which positions justice as a pathway to repair the world, we are horrified and heartbroken by Hamas’s terrorist atrocities against innocent Israeli civilians. We mourn the lives lost in this murderous rampage, pray for a swift release of all hostages, and condemn all forms of hate and violence. 

While this is a dark and difficult time, we remain hopeful and steadfast in our support of partners working to systemically advance racial, economic, and environmental justice in Israel-Palestine. 

We know the road to peace and justice in the region is a long one. As we support that journey as a diverse and multiracial collective, we are united by our commitment to our values. We stand in solidarity with our partners and all those who share them.

Staying true to our value of listening and learning, we updated this statement on October 11 based on new developments and understanding from our community.

The Nathan Cummings Foundation is pleased to announce that Kristi Cunningham Whitfield will join the Foundation as our first Chief Impact Officer and Director of Racial Justice. In this role, Kristi will help guide and measure our strategic effort to leverage all the foundation’s assets in ways that advance impact toward racial, economic, and environmental justice (REEJ). She will also oversee our racial-justice grantmaking. Her first day is October 11, 2023.

 “I know from first-hand experience that Kristi is a dynamic leader who finds solutions outside the box and approaches her work with curiosity, passion, and integrity. When it comes to carrying forward our strategic plan and relentless pursuit of impact, I can’t think of a more seasoned executive for the job,” says Rey Ramsey, CEO and President.

“It’s an honor to have this opportunity to work with the foundation’s bold leadership to explore what’s not only possible but necessary to advance racial, economic, and environmental justice,” says Kristi. “NCF is on an admirable journey to use all its assets to support some truly incredible work and solutions, and I’m looking forward to embarking on that journey together.”

The through line of Kristi’s career, which spans the nonprofit, for-profit, and government sectors, is social justice and balancing the scales of opportunity. While she has many guiding mantras, one that you’ll hear her often say is “Socio-economic status should never determine one’s access to opportunity.”

Kristi started her career as an advocate for community-based housing and economic development in Boston and Washington, DC. She later expanded to the national level in her role as the coordinator of the $65M National Community Development Initiative for the Enterprise Foundation. Most recently, Kristi served as the Director of the DC Department of Small and Local Business Development, where she oversaw the allocation of over $1B to the small business community, created a $6M fund to support community wealth building through property ownership, and supported business growth for people of color from the city’s most under-resourced neighborhoods.

Kristi also held a senior role with the Women’s Institute for Housing and Economic Development, worked as Director of Field Operations at the Enterprise Foundation. She previously owned the nationally recognized and DC-based Curbside Cupcakes, where she successfully advocated for groundbreaking legal reform as the Founding Chairperson of the DC Food Truck Association. As Kristi would humbly say it, she “went from an affordable housing developer to a baker and business owner to a government director.”

Kristi attended Swarthmore College, where she received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Sociology with a concentration in Black Studies, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she received a Masters of City Planning degree with a focus in Housing and Community Development.

For any media inquiries, please contact Candice Wynter (Candice.Wynter@nathancummings.org).

New York, NY – The Nathan Cummings Foundation (NCF) announced today that Melissa Bradley and Daniel Tellalian will become the foundation’s newest Independent (non-family) Trustees.

Melissa is the founder and managing partner at 1863 Ventures, a business-development company and family of venture funds that delivers content and connections to New Majority entrepreneurs to foster responsible entrepreneurship and change the support and narrative around their potential and needs. Daniel is the founder and CEO of Angel City Advisors, an impact-investment consultancy that connects community voice and social enterprise to catalytic capital.

“Melissa and Daniel are rock stars in their fields,” said Rebecca Gregg, co-chair of the board’s Independent Trustee Search Committee. “We welcome their strong, independent voices and know that they both bring a fantastic combination of skills and experiences for helping the foundation use the totality of its assets to advance racial, economic, and environmental justice.”

Melissa has dedicated her professional career to supporting historically marginalized communities to create wealth via business growth and scale. She has done so in the public, private, and social sectors. She has also done so in her ongoing role as a professor of practice at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business, where she teaches about impact investing and related topics.

During her tenure in the Obama Administration, she served as chief strategy officer for AmeriCorps, worked in the Partnerships Office for the Department of Education, served on the intergovernmental task force for My Brother’s Keeper, and directed the White House Social Innovation Fund. During her tenure in the Clinton Administration, she served in the Treasury Department and researched small-business access and individual development accounts as well as regulated minority depository institutions. In the nonprofit sector, she founded several nonprofit organizations focused on asset and economic development and served as CEO of Tides Inc., where she managed more than $500M in assets. Melissa graduated from Georgetown University with a Bachelor of Science in Finance and earned a Master’s degree in Business Administration from American University.

“NCF invested in my organization last year, and our partnership has been very successful,” said Melissa. “As a result, I was eager to put my hat in the ring to join the NCF board. I’m excited to take on this new role as a fiduciary and lend my diverse experiences along the foundation’s pursuit of justice.”

Daniel is already part of the NCF community. Since 2020, he has served—and distinguished himself—on the foundation’s Investment Committee. He has more than two decades of experience in investing, entrepreneurship, business mentoring, financial transactions, and community economic development. Angel City Advisors is his fourth startup. First recognized by Echoing Green as a social entrepreneur for his work in the aftermath of the 1992 Los Angeles riots, Daniel now proudly manages the Signal Fund, an early-stage catalytic fund for the Echoing Green fellowship. He also spent 13 years as principal and partner at Emerging Markets, Inc., an economic development consulting firm that assisted the private sector to responsibly pursue business opportunities within place-based community development initiatives nationwide. Daniel was also a founding member and managing partner of Avivar Capital, an advisory firm focused on impact investing. He has investment and operational knowledge across a number of sectors including food, life science, climate, and real estate. Daniel holds a BS in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School; an MBA from UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business; and a JD from UC Berkeley’s School of Law. He is a licensed CPA and attorney in California.

“It’s an honor to step up my engagement with the foundation and the family,” Daniel said. “In my three years working alongside the family and Investment Committee, I’ve been impressed—and touched by—the trustees’ and staff’s humility and ideals. In this new capacity, I can give the foundation the benefit of everything I’ve learned about using the power of people and markets to advance equity.”

For additional information about this announcement, please contact Candice Wynter, at Candice.wynter@nathancummings.org.

A cornerstone decision of our five-year strategic plan is to converge the totality of our assets — people, relationships, knowledge, voice, and money — to advance impact toward racial, economic, and environmental justice (REEJ).

Here are a couple headlines about how we’re implementing that approach:  

• We launched three, cross-departmental Solution Teams. At its best, impact is about the pursuit of solutions, and in our case it’s about the pursuit of solutions that advance REEJ. That’s why we’ve established three Solution Teams – one for each of the issues within REEJ. Our grants and partnerships, mission investment, communications, and people and culture teams will work collectively and side-by-side with these cross-departmental Solutions Teams to steward the foundation’s investments in ways that maximize impact toward REEJ. The Solutions Teams’ will identify impact goals and how we will make investment decisions to achieve them. Over the next few years, we will align our budgets and resource allocations accordingly.

• We introduced program-related investments to our asset pool. In 2018, we aimed to stretch our financial assets beyond the five percent required from foundations by committing 100 percent of NCF’s endowment to mission–aligned investing. Now, we’ve taken that a step further by carving out $22 million, or five percent, of our endowment for PRIs. We already made some exploratory PRIs last year to incredible organizations, including 1863 Ventures Fund, Southern Bancorp Community Partners, and South Carolina Community Loan Fund, and we are excited to enter new partnerships beginning in 2024. Stay tuned for more information.

Thanks for reading. Look out for more brief bulletins like this in the coming months. 

In partnership,

Rey Ramsey

As part of my switch from interim to ongoing NCF president and CEO, I’ve decided to launch a series of quick-hitter bulletins. I’ll use these bulletins to communicate more frequently and proactively about the foundation’s work and our support of racial, economic, and environmental justice (REEJ).

I am pleased to share exciting news about the incoming leadership on our board of trustees. For the first time in the foundation’s history, the majority of the board’s executive positions are now held by fourth generation family members—that is, the great-grandchildren of Nathan Cummings.

Here are the headlines:

• Jaimie Mayer, the first fourth-generation family member to serve as board chair, has just been reelected—unanimously—to serve a second three-year term as our chair. The board sees, as do I, that Jaimie possesses the courage, creativity, and dedication to lead NCF as we seek to leverage the totality of our assets to pursue social impact.

• Amy Sorensen has just been elected to serve as vice chair of the board. Amy, who leads external relations and partnerships for the Israel-based NGO Pico Kids, has already demonstrated her leadership chops through her service as chair of the board committee focused on deploying the foundation’s assets for impact.  

• Rebecca Gregg was elected to serve as board secretary. While this is her first time serving as a board officer, Rebecca has lent her warmth and intelligence to the board since 2016.

• Adam Cummings will continue his service as board treasurer, supporting the continuity and intergenerational work of the foundation.

We are also continuing to invest in and build out our independent (non-family) board leadership:

• Dimple Sahni, who previously served as an advisor to the board’s Investment Committee, will now serve as the committee’s chair. In her day job, Dimple is the Managing Director of Multi Asset Impact Investing at Anthos Fund and Asset Management, a values based asset management firm rooted in the DNA of a single family office.

• We are also actively searching for two independent trustees who are passionate about and have expertise arounds racial, economic, and/or environmental justice. Learn more and apply here. 

Thanks for reading. Look out for more brief bulletins like this in the coming months.

Rey Ramsey

Nathan Cummings Foundation CEO

We ended last year with an important vote. Our board voted unanimously to approve a five-year strategic plan. The plan is the culmination of a highly engaged process guided by our values, field data, and our community. We studied social, political, and economic data, and we listened to the diverse perspectives of more than fifty partners, peers, and other issue experts. What we learned set us on a path to support systemic solutions that advance racial, economic, and environmental justice (REEJ). 

To this end, we made the following strategic decisions: 

We decided to make REEJ our sole focus. Through our strategic-planning process, we realized we were spreading our resources too thin to achieve transformative change. That realization, combined with a root-cause analysis of the issues at the core of our mission, drove our decision to bring all our work into alignment with REEJ. This decision covers not only our domestic work but also our work in the Israel-Palestine region.

We decided to converge all our assets for a “totality” approach to impact. We are reorganizing the ways we work so we can combine all the organization’s assets —people, relationships, knowledge, voice, and money — to support REEJ. As part of that, we will work in close coordination with Bivium Capital and Westfuller, our Outsourced Chief Investment Officer, to expand our impact-investing activities. In addition to doubling down on our shareholder activism and commitment to 100 percent mission-aligned investing, we will be introducing program-related investments (PRIs) into our portfolio. 

We decided to invest more resources in the U.S. South. We know that groundbreaking work to advance REEJ is emerging from BIPOC communities in the South, even though the region has received comparatively little philanthropic support. While we will continue supporting national work, we are carving out a portion of our resources exclusively for designated place(s) in the South. We are undergoing a stakeholder-driven and data-informed process to select the “where” and “how much,” and we will share this information with you when we have it. 

We decided to deepen our ethos of learning and improvement. Continuous improvement requires a commitment to learning from and listening to our partners and frontline communities. It also rests on the pursuit of data and information and the internalized belief that we do not possess all the answers. We will be developing measurement mechanisms across the foundation to hold ourselves accountable to the impact we seek, while staying true to trust-based values.

We decided to prioritize strengthening our internal culture. We know REEJ is an internal commitment as much as an external one. As one step toward that commitment, we are deepening staff and board understanding and skill on multiple issues related to racial equity and inclusion. The board is also dedicated to strengthening governance and solidifying the foundation’s leadership. Thus, it has re-elected Jaimie Mayer as Board Chair and given me the authority to lead the organization as President and CEO on an ongoing basis.  

Our staff is already working to determine how to best put the board’s strategic decisions into action, and we will share more developments over the coming year. We appreciate the wisdom this community holds, and we look forward to continuing to engage you in our pursuit of REEJ.   

Onwards! 

Rey Ramsey
President and CEO

For inquiries please contact: Communications@nathancummings.org  

NEW YORK, NY, September 9, 2021 – The Nathan Cummings Foundation (NCF) today announced its selection of Bivium Capital and WestFuller Advisors as its new Outsourced Chief Investment Officer (OCIO). Bivium Capital and WestFuller Advisors are Black owned and BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) led.

“Our primary goal is to continue our journey to maximize all of our assets for societal impact,” said Rey Ramsey, NCF trustee, member of the investment committee, and interim CEO. “In opening the door to Bivium and WestFuller, we know that we open other doors that can no longer remain shut.”

Bivium Capital, which has operated for nearly 20 years, focuses on values-aligned investing and sourcing diverse, emerging managers. WestFuller Advisors, which has operated for more than 10 years, provides bespoke investment solutions for families and institutions seeking meaningful social impact and financial returns. Collectively, the firms have close to $2.5 billion in assets under advisement, excluding NCF’s nearly $500 million endowment. The partnership is augmented by Beacon Rose Partners, a real estate investment-management and advisory firm with an inclusive, community-driven lens.

“NCF’s desire for a ‘total enterprise approach’ will be our firms’ North Star,” said WestFuller Advisors Managing Director and Co-founder Ian Fuller. “We have an opportunity to build a world-class portfolio that not only maximizes financial and impact returns for NCF but also demonstrates what’s possible when you invest for long-term, systemic change.”

“Most foundations consider impact and financial returns separately,” said Bivium Chief Investment Strategist Kai Hong. “But NCF has an integrated framework that will allow us to use mission as the lens through which we assess all factors – risk, return, liquidity, and impact –when making investment decisions. It’s leading-edge work.”

In 2018, NCF became the largest foundation to commit to move 100 percent of its assets into mission-aligned investments. NCF’s new partnership with Bivium Capital and WestFuller Advisors will allow it to advance that journey. Together, they will foster an inclusive investing process; make more investments that directly advance racial, economic, and environmental justice; and design impact reports that improve accountability and reflect the foundation’s theory of change. “We can’t solve the big problems at the core of our mission by following the same playbook that helped create those problems in the first place,” said Bob Bancroft, NCF’s Vice President of Finance and Mission Investing. “Institutions like ours can flip the script and develop a more integrated approach to impact.”

“NCF is serious about allocating capital differently – using a different lens, backing new kinds of opportunities, and serving the needs of a broader range of beneficiaries,” said Bivium President and CEO Lawrence Bancroft. “We will use our diverse networks to open up the aperture of investment options for NCF.”  

“Having worked in this industry for decades, it’s incredibly meaningful to partner with an organization like NCF that walks its values in everything it does. I acknowledge NCF for having the intention to cause ripples throughout the foundation world in ways that foster better outcomes for investors and society alike,” said WestFuller Co-founder and Managing Director Lola C. West.

“Reverend Jesse Jackson talks about how baseball became better when Ernie Banks, Jackie Robinson, Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, and other great players joined it,” said John Rogers, former NCF investment committee member and founder of Ariel Investments, the first Black-owned mutual fund in the U.S. “When investors start to open the gates and work with diverse managers, they’ll discover – just like they did in baseball – that there’s plenty of exceptional players out there ready to transform the game.”

For media inquiries contact Candice Wynter at communications@nathancummings.org.

# # #

About Nathan Cummings Foundation

The Nathan Cummings Foundation is a multigenerational family foundation, rooted in the Jewish tradition of social justice and working to create a more just, vibrant, sustainable, and democratic society. The foundation has four areas of focus: advancing racial and economic justice; transitioning to an inclusive clean economy; activating corporate and political accountability; and building solidarity through voice, creativity, and culture. Its commitment to 100 percent mission-aligned investing flows from Nathan Cummings’s anchoring ethos that “nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must be first overcome.”

About Bivium Capital Partners, WestFuller Advisors and Beacon Rose

Bivium, WestFuller and Beacon Rose are partnered to provide Outsourced Chief Investment Officer services, providing sustainable, responsible, and impact-focused advisory solutions for today’s leading foundations, nonprofits, university endowments, and family offices. Helmed by one of the most diverse leadership teams in the OCIO ecosystem, the group advises with a commitment to community engagement; diversity, equity and inclusion; and social and climate justice. Their collaboration represents a new class of values-centered investment advisory – guiding with deep institutional-investment expertise, a commitment to enduring systemic change, and diverse leadership that creates long-term value.

Dear Community,

We are pleased to announce that Bree Jones, Imara Jones, and Ewune Ewane were selected as the three recipients for the sixth cycle of the Nathan Cummings Foundation Fellowship. The three leaders will use their awards to create pathways for community wealth building with people of color; center the brilliance of Black transgender people and their stories; and support the mental health and wellness of racially, ethnically, and culturally diverse communities.  

Our Fellowship Selection Committee — composed of our staff and Board and other experts in the social justice field — received over 200 applications and selected three among a group of 10 exceptionally strong finalists that best advanced NCF’s mission to build a more just, vibrant, sustainable, and democratic society. Each Fellow will receive up to $150,000 to turn their ideas into meaningful action. As part of the program, they will also receive hands-on training, resources, and leadership development to scale the impact of their work. 
 
Together, the 2021 Fellows will engage in groundbreaking work that supports their respective communities to thrive for the long-term. 
 
Bree Jones founded Parity in March 2018 to increase affordable housing opportunities with communities in West Baltimore who have historically faced housing discrimination and environmental racism. Parity buys vacant and distressed properties, revitalizes them using green building practices, and creates pathways for communities to purchase homes at an affordable rate. Through Parity, individuals can pool their resources with their peers — friends, family, colleagues, members of their congregation — to buy homes together on a block-by-block basis. “I started Parity in response to the gentrification and displacement I witnessed in my own hometown,” says Jones. “So much of this work is about the reclamation of power and agency for Black communities, especially as it pertains to land and place. We’re ensuring people who have been historically disinvested of wealth are able to participate in and benefit from reinvestment into their communities, through ownership and equity creation.”  – Bree Jones
 
Imara Jones is an award-winning journalist and creator of TransLash, a journalism and narrative change project that centers the voices, perspectives, and solutions of Black trans people. It promotes inclusion and acceptance by embedding new perspectives of Black trans people into public consciousness. “We are righting our nation’s history by including Black trans people in the discourse about racial and gender equality and the reimagination of the world we want to create. We tell trans stories to save trans lives,” says Jones.
 
Ewune Ewane is the founder of Minds Over Melanin, an online community mental health platform. Building on her ten-year career in psychology, Ewane aims to transform psychology to provide effective, culturally competent care to restore justice within Black, Indigenous, and communities of color medically traumatized and marginalized by systemic racism and cultural bias in psychological diagnosis, treatment, and education. “The purpose of this work is to see those who are unseen and to hear those who are unheard. With listening, learning, and professional humility we can address racism and discrimination experienced in psychological treatment,” says Ewane. “Through the efforts of Minds Over Melanin, we are fostering the development of safe spaces for Black, Indigenous, and people of color to process their emotional and mental experiences and heal without harm.”  
 
Click here to learn more about the work of this year’s Fellows and finalists. 
 

Warmly,  

The NCF Fellowship Team 

Rachel Fagiano, Associate Program Officer
Jennifer Kaizer, Program Manager